Thursday, January 14, 2016

Hello everyone, I'm here today to share a winter themed decor project that I made for the DecoArt Media Winter Wonderland Challenge! My entryway has been feeling rather sad since I put all my Christmas decorations away so I wanted to dress it up again with a project that is wintry but not necessarily Christmassy. I think this fits the bill!

I used loads of DecoArt Media Fluid Acrylics and other DecoArt products. I'll give you a run down and some closeups:

The arches are shapes I cut out of foam core board. (Tip: always use a super sharp X-acto blade when cutting foam core!) I base coated them with Prussian Blue Hue and then covered them with Crackle Paint. Remember thicker paint makes bigger crackles, so I tried to vary the thickness a bit for variety. When the paint was dry I gave the frames a light wash of Medium Grey to bring out the cracks and textures.

The deer were painted with Burnt Umber with a bit of Titan Buff mixed in (plus Gold for the antlers). When dry, I coated them with Glue 'n Seal and sprinkled on dry Rock Candy Distress Glitter.

The blue background in the arches is the result of a little experiment I did. I used illustration board as a substrate, wet it first and loosely applied watered down Cobalt Blue Hue, Cerulean Blue, and few splatters of Paynes Grey. I wanted it to look blotchy so I didn't overwork the colors. I was wondering what would happen if I sprinkled salt all over it while it was still wet. This is a tried and true technique when watercoloring – you get a gorgeous, feathery pattern when it all dries. I wasn't sure how it would react with acrylics. I sprinkled the table salt on and let it sit until the board dried. It didn't react like watercolor paint does at all but I was very pleased with the speckle pattern it left. I think it's perfect for a snowy background!

The full board of the sky background. I also splattered some White Shimmer Mist here and there.

After cutting out the arch shapes to go behind the frames, I stamped the treelines and stamped and embossed the snowflakes.

I also similarly used Fluid Acrylics to create a sheet of paper to cut up for the trees.

The full sheet of "tree" paper.

I used smooth bristol board and Sap Green and Veridian to make the mottled texture. I splattered on lots of paint as it was drying so it was more speckled and textured looking. Once my trees were constructed, I dry brushed on Interference Green paint to highlight the branches and add a surprising glimmer.

If you are still here I'm almost done lol. The snowflakes were die cut out of scrap packaging plastic and embossed with the folder that comes with the die (Snowflake Duo by Sizzix) I dabbed one side with watered down Silver paint and then applied Crackle Glaze to the opposite side once it was dry. While the glaze was wet I sprinkled on a touch of Ultra-fine Art Sugar glitter. Last but not least, the base of the project is covered with Snow Tex paint with Rock Candy glitter sprinkled on while the paint was wet. You can see I am a fan of sparkle.

Whew that was long! I hope you've been inspired and maybe picked up a few things to try yourself. For even more inspiration, head on over to The Mixed Media Monthly Challenge Blog and check out our current challenge, Time Flies. (You can see my original post and more details HERE.) You have until the end of the month to join in and link up your projects!

Thanks for stopping by! The supplies I used
for this project can be found at Sizzix, Simon Says Stamp or Amazon. Follow the links below and a shopping you may go. ;-)

Monday, January 11, 2016

Howdy all! Tim Holtz is at it again with a new series of monthly tags for 2016. This year he is changing it up a bit and doing what he calls "technique remixes". Taking two tags from past years, he creates a mashup of the techniques from those months and makes a brand new look from them. This is January's:

I decided to make mine a card for my hubby's birthday (since I needed a card for him lol.) I also made an ATC because I'm pretty much addicted to making them now. ;-)

I used the techniques as described in Tim's post but adapted them to fit my chosen formats. I'm happy with how they turned out. Any project that you can use gears on is a fun one!

Thanks for stopping by! The supplies I used
for this project can be found at Sizzix, Inspiration Emporium or Amazon. Follow the links below and use my code JUICE at Inspiration
Emporium to save 10% if you go shopping there. I will also point out
that US shipping
is always $5 and international shipping is just $10 at IE.

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